Top 81 Quotes & Sayings by Jasper Johns

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

I tend to like things that already exist.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.

I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

I never wish for critics.

I'm not sure what 'coming out right' means. It often means that what you do holds a kind of energy that you wouldn't just put there, that comes about through grace of some sort.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

What you might consider a bad work can be of extreme interest to an artist in ways which are not about its being a good or bad.

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.

One wants one's work to be the world, but of course it's never the world. The work is in the world; it never contains the whole thing.

One works without thinking how to work.

I am not strong on perfection.

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.

Everybody is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

I have meant what I have done. Or I have often meant what I have done. Or I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or I have tried to mean what I was doing.

I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don't usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate.

I'm working in my mind.

It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something.

A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.

Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."

One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.

I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.

I'm not looking for images, They just appear and take on an interest. Sometimes you look at a thing and it has no interest and then you see it in a different way and it has another meaning. Or something that was of no use will become useful.

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

I think through living one's life, one both changes and remains the same. One can see it either way, one can see oneself as being now what one was and one can see oneself as being absolutely different from what one was. It's a trick of thought.

Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

I’m interested in things which suggest the world rather than express the personality... The most conventional thing, the most ordinary - it seems to me that those things can be dealt with without having to judge them; they seem to me to exist as clear facts, not involving aesthetic hierarchy.

When you work you learn something about what you are doing and you develop habits and procedures out of what you're doing.

There may or may not be an idea, and the meaning may just be that the painting exists.

My experience with life is that it's very fragmented. In one place certain kinds of thing occur, and in another place a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences. I guess, in painting, it would amount to different kinds of space being represented in it.

One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.